Small Box is pleased to announce that our new office in Austin Texas is now open for business. Since 2006 Small Box has been providing custom web solutions for businesses and non profit organizations in Indianapolis.

Now Small Box is taking the same great design and technology to a new level. Austin Texas is different from anywhere else. There is a big focus on Social Networking. There are many entrepreneurs and business startups looking for venture capital.

Our goal is to be a one stop shop for anyone looking to have a great looking site on the first page of the search engines. Call PJ Christie at 512-850-4819.

Follow our special Twitter feed @smallboxaustin for local insights including SXSW.

Social Media Demographics Infographic

Overview

This is a fantastic infographic from Flowtown discovered while updating our research on social media optimization. Two things that caught my eye was the age  of Facebook users. 1/3 of Facebook users are 35-54 yrs old?? So I decided to check some facts.

The Data

The data was taken from DoubleClick’s Ad Planner (now owned by google).  Digging a little deeper I found the following statement about the demographic data:

“Ad Planner demographics are generated through demographic inference algorithms that combine third-party demographic data with Google sample data. The third-party demographic data is licensed from an industry-accepted consumer research panel operated according to industry best practices by a full-service research firm.”source

Seems thorough enough for me.

Facebook Stats From Double Click Ad Planner

Then I visited Facebook’s ad tool. Check out the “estimated reach” (of an ad) to 15-34 yr olds and 35-54 yr olds. They show nearly double the  younger users.

Ages 15-34

Ages 35-54

Bottom Line

It’s always important to understand the context. This data set useful for knowing where to advertise to users, which can inform social media marketing, but doesn’t necessarily tell you where to connect with users on a social level. And, in my opinion, advertising and connecting are two different things that are growing farther and farther apart.

Other Resources

There a great blog by Brett Borow titled 10 Musts for Marketing to Women on Facebook.

For more scholarly information about social media/networks, check out Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

PJ and I are down in Austin for the annual SXSW Interactive conference. I’m taking a break from the insanity to charge up my phone, post this blog and get cleaned up before heading out again.

This place is nuts. I’ve never seen some many people walking around looking at their phones. Mostly iPhones. That seems to be the overwhelming flavor of choice. Apple in general is the default for this group. I’m just as guilty as the rest. So I’ve had to run back for quick re-charges a few times in the 30 odd hours I’ve been here so far.

Only 30 hours, hard to believe, and I’ve been asleep for about 6 of those. I was warned to rest up before coming. I could have done better.

Some random highlights:

Seeing Jason Fried of 37 Signals speak and sorta read from his new book “Rework” which I read on the flight done.

Hang out with my buddy Burr Settles who is presenting here on his FAWM.org project. He is also working at Carnegie Mellon on a fascinating project involving scrapping the web for contextual/localized content. They have a Google Grant to help with funding. Smart dude.

Meeting a woman who was sent by the Chickasaw Nation to learn about how they can use Social Media to connect their people.

Going to an awesome throwdown/party at The Boiling Pot put on by our friends at Kristian Andersen Associates (thanks Kristian!)

Attending numerous panels/speakers/workshops that built/expanded/challenged/educated me in many ways I could never cover now but did via my Twitter posts.  (I was disappointed that all the CMS talk at events is around Drupal with no attention to proprietary or even Microsoft solutions.)

To follow my travels and thoughts please follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/jebbanner

more soon!

I was hanging out on Musicalfamilytree.com, a Small Box project focused on archiving Indiana music and conversations about it, and one of the members, Kevin D. McCollough, used a term I hadn’t heard before- “Fanvertise”. He asked if it was ok to “fanvertise” on the site and then linked to something he liked. Sure, I said, and hey, that’s a really cool word! I did some searching and it appears that it has been used a few times but not much. Right now if you Google fanvertise the post from Musical Family Tree shows up near the top of page one and the comment was just left yesterday. That means it’s not in widespread use in my experience.

So I wrote up a quick definition of Fanvertise and posted it to my Twitter account. Here it is as well:

Fanvertise- when a person or “fan” promotes third party goods or services without direct compensation.

I would consider it a sub-category of Viral Marketing but mostly I just like the word better. Viral has a nasty, sickish sound to it, right? Fanvertise sounds fun and captures what people are really doing.

So how do you get Fanvertising? It is obviously much more desirable than traditional advertising since it’s free and the other is, uh, not. It’s also cheaper than traditional PR since PR agencies can be pricey too. Both advertising and PR are often needed and are usually effective if executed correctly but they don’t have nearly the ROI of real and mostly free (not counting your time) Fanvertising.

I see Fanvertising as a 3 step process:

Fanvertising Step #1. Be awesome at what you do, you cannot suck. You have to have the happiest customers on earth or at least in your industry. In being the best you will give your customers the emotional foundation for singing your praises via every channel at their disposal.

Customer service should be treated as a marketing expense not an afterthought. Happy customers will bring you more customers. This is true in the B2B and B2C worlds.

Instead of focusing on selling your product or service, focus on making your current customers happy. They will then do the selling for you. This is the core of Fanvertising. Don’t think about new customers until you have taken care of your current ones.

Fanvertising Step #2. Be an enabler. Give them the tools to tell their stories, not your story. Your story doesn’t matter that much on its own. It only has really impact when combined with a customer’s story- “I’ve spent years looking for a good carpet cleaning service and now I’ve found it in XYZ Company, check out their website, Facebook page, etc- here. Highly recommended!”. If you don’t have easy ways for your fans to Fanvertise your company then they will most likely move on and not get around to it. Make it super easy.

Fanvertising Step #3. Say “thank you”. Don’t ignore feedback, good or bad, acknowledge it, engage in a conversation if it’s bad, spread it around if it’s good. Remember what the Bible says- “Let others praise you”, just don’t forget to say “thanks!”.

In the brave new world of Social Media there are so many opportunities for Fanvertising. Make sure you are following these three steps and Fanvertising will start growing your business.

People talk a lot about the power of social media. Mostly it’s just talk, no real examples. Here’s one.

The Small Box offices are above Qdoba here in lovely Broad Ripple, Indianapolis. If you step out on our “deck” (aka the roof access we have at Small Box) you have a 25% of chance of being blasted by smoke from their grills. Ah….nothing like chicken grease in the morning!

Up to recently you were also likely to hear their questionable music mix softly blasting through the floorboards of our main room where I happen to sit with 3-4 other team members every weekday.

Everyday…the same songs by Tom Petty…3 Doors Down…Coldplay…The Fray….ugh. It was the bane of our existence. We mockingly sang along in falsettos and I even got a mix CD of Qdoba music for Christmas from Karl Hosttetler (very funny Karl).

(Crazy thing is we continued to routinely order from Qdoba. Hey, it’s good stuff! One visit would be to grab a burrito, another to complain about the noise. Maybe a good thing we can see them make our food!)

Keep in mind that Small Box happens to be run by a bunch of music nerds. People that pride themselves on thinking they know a thing or two about music and will probably tell you as much over drinks if you are ever so “lucky”. So this wasn’t just a pet peeve but a serious issue (at least in our snobby minds).

So, we tried to get them to turn down, repeatedly. We went down and talked to them, had the landlord call the owner, called them almost daily “I really do love Tom Petty but I just can’t hear American Girl another time…please turn it down!”. They said it was corporate policy, no dice, had to be this loud.

We even thought about moving and we really love the space. We love being in the middle of Broad Ripple. But the music was driving us crazy. People were working from home to avoid it. Something had to break.

Then it happened.

Jerry Hellmann, one of the guys that was enduring the daily onslaught of Celine Dion, posted a comment on Qdoba’s Central Indiana Facebook Page. Here’s what he posted:

“Qdoba! I have the absolute BEST Christmas gift you could give to your customers!! Please, PLEASE turn down or change that terrible VH1 classic, 10 song muzak playlist that is rumbling my floor! I work above your Broad Ripple office and I’m considering seeing a psychiatrist because of this. A man can only take so mu…ch of hootie’s “i only want to be with you” and the painfully horrible “Rockabye”…..last but not least……the office favorite…..Annie Lennox’s “no more i love you’s”. Please Qdoba, have mercy on us all. Turn down that horrible sound….our ears won’t stop bleeding. NO JOKE – Train’s “Drops of Jupiter” just started playing. GOD HELP US!!!!!!!!!!!“
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/QDOBA-Central-Indiana/189858001092?v=wall&ref=mf

The next day we had a representative from the Qdoba corporate office at our door. She was there to drop off a gift certificate for Jerry who was out at the time. PJ and I had her sit down and listen to the music wafting through the floors. We begged her, please! fix it!

…and they did. We can no longer here Qdoba’s finely tuned, demographically targeted music mix. We can actually sit quietly and think. They have put in new speakers that no longer broadcast into our room. We have been saved!

Thank you Jerry!
Thank you Facebook!
and yes, thank you Qdoba!

Social Media Platform Fatigue- when a social media site suffers a drop in users or activity due to the users becoming increasingly annoyed or bored with the user experience.

No platform is perfect and certainly no platform is perfect for every user. Add to that users are not a static bunch. They are learning and changing the more they “use” software and the Web. Users also increasingly expect software and websites to improve dramatically on a regular basis. This is increasingly important for daily use sites. Sites like Facebook, Google, CNN, ESPN, Twitter etc. Sites that the same users visit day in and out. 

Most of the time improving a site doesn’t mean just adding more stuff to it. Just take a look at Facebook or MySpace to see what happens when you add functionality and content to a platform without really considering how it should be organized for the user. Both platforms are increasingly messy and hard to navigate.

Platform Fatigue is seen most acutely in social media sites. Consider that only 6 years ago Friendster was the dominant online social networking site and MySpace was just beginning to rise through the ranks. Friendster-MySpace-Facebook-Twitter all in 6 years!

Maybe the problem here wasn’t so much the inevitable spam and clutter but the platform itself. Maybe users just got tired of the platform?

The challenge is that social media sites start out doing one or two things really well but they usually give into the temptation of trying to be all things everyone. MySpace was where bands went to post their music, Facebook was for college students, etc, but now both those sites have lost their defined and even narrow vision in an attempt to attract more visitors and thereby revenue. MySpace is heading south and I predict Facebook could see a similar fate in 2010 if it doesn’t fix some usability issues. Facebook is becoming really hard to navigate.

Twitter is an interesting exception to the rule so far. It has mostly resisted the temptation to expand its offerings. It has made small incremental moves, recently “lists”, but nothing dramatic. The platform is really simple to use, you can only do about 4 things on Twitter but there applications are limitless. I wonder how long before the investors start to clamour for ways to suck revenue from Twitter? That push usually leads to a chaotic rush to add features that are revenue based in some way or another.

I’m sure some users get frustrated with the limitations of Twitter but I would think some users get frustrated with the limitations of Google as well. But consider this, Google users have very little platform fatigue. They use it multiple times a day. It doesn’t try to be all things to all people. There is really only one thing you can do on Google.com for the average user- find stuff via search. Sure Google has Gmail, Docs, Wave etc but most users are just doing one thing- search. Those other apps are great next steps in the relationship but they generally don’t clutter the search experience with these other offerings. They mostly act as stand alone platforms.

Other search engines tried to expand their search offerings in an attempt to monetize their user base only to drive those same users into the arms of Google. Yahoo clutters its home page with ads and links to all kinds of junk- is it a news site? Email? Search engine? Store? All of the above?  Sure! All Google cares about is the user, they know a sustainable revenue model only happens with happy users.

So my advice to Social Media sites- focus more on the user experience and less on new features. It may be frustrating at times for some users who are craving new features but the other road leads to a feature rich site that is increasingly difficult to use. I see Facebook heading this direction and the further it goes the less I find myself stopping by to check in on my friends. Too bad since it was a nice platform, once.

A year or so ago Ning.com was the belle of the ball. Gina Bianchini, the company’s CEO was featured on the cover of Fast Company. The article “Ning’s Infinite Ambition” detailed their viral loop strategy to getting 4 million Ning communities online by 2010.

Ok, well here we are entering the 4th quarter of 2009 and there are “only” 1.5 million Ning Networks and only a fifth of those are active. Only 3% of the communities are paying to run their own ads. I would argue that is an even better indication of how many truly active. Finally many feel, myself included, that the platform has not evolved fast enough to keep up with Facebook and Twitter.  In October 2008 Ning stopped supporting any API activity telling developers to work within the Open Social platform. Not a bad choice for some but certainly not the preferred method for most developers who want to customize their Ning Network and push content out to third party apps ala Tweetdeck, etc.

It’s no secret that Ning’s RSS feeds suck. Their event feed doesn’t even include a field for the event’s date! If ou pull in the date field it’s the date the event was posted which is near worthless. Basically Ning has done as little as possible to make their platform a broadcast platform. It wants everyone to come to their party but they won’t return the favor. Ning just doesn’t play nice.

Also, some feel that Ning is actually a scam. Setting up this cool, white label social networking platform and then co-opting the users that their site admins have gathered. Read an interesting post on this and other Ning theories at Charting Stocks.

It appears that Ning has lots of money, having raised $60 million last April on a $500 million evaluation, also it has yearly revenues around $10 million. Not too shabby. So why aren’t they investing in the platform? Is Ning looking to be bought out? I would argue making improvements would increase that likelihood. Everyday that passes leaves Ning further and further behind. Their unwillingness to let their site administrators easily integrate third party apps and sites has opened the door for new Social Network services like SocialGo.com to get their foot in.

I’m frustrated by Ning. At Small Box we run, consult and develop around several Ning communities, including the Indiana Music site Musicalfamilytree.com and the Indiana business site SmallerIndiana.com, but we consistently run into issues with the platform. Whether it’s bad RSS feeds or little control over the design and functionality we have to be very creative and make numerous compromises on a regular basis. With Musical Family Tree we have actually developed an entirely separate platform that appears to integrate seamlessly but I can assure it was anything but easy to do.

So what’s up Ning? Why won’t you open up the API and let our Social Networks play nice with third party apps? Why won’t you develop the platform to realize it’s true potential?

What do you think? Is Ning on the right track or losing momentum?

I started to hit on this idea in my last blog about how much to pay for a website and it seems to resonate with some people so I wanted to pull the idea out and expand on it here.

In our experience most companies have starter websites- basically a brochure on the web. It’s a destination. Maybe you find it via a search for the company name but not much else. All the visitors know something about the company or they wouldn’t be there. A “preaching to the choir” website. A website that exists only because you “have” to have a website.

The problem is that this kind web presence is almost worthless and will do nothing to grow your company. In fact it may be hurting it.

The few that find their way there wonder how legitimate your company is if you don’t have a “real” website.

So what is a “real” website?

A real website is a broadcast platform. Here’s some of the characteristics of broadcasting website:

Social Media- when you add a blog it automagically updates your company’s Twitter account, and other services, with a link to that blog.
RSS- your site’s RSS feed is being pulled in by other blogs and services like Google Reader.
Google loves you- a search engine friendly site will rank for many competitive keyword searches.
You site is easy to update- so you look forward to adding new pages and content which only brings more traffic. (don’t get me started on the importance of a good Content Management System!)
Your site listens- lets users leave feedback, comments and generally interact in a playful way.

The function of a website is changing. If “content is king” then a website’s job is to broadcast that content across the web’s many platforms.

The companies that invest in content broadcasting sites will win search, traffic and eventually the customer.

When I go out and talk to business owners I often notice a sense of panic about Social Media. They are afraid they are being left behind. Often this panic leads to creating numerous accounts on various Social Media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter, etc. That’s fine, no reason not to set up accounts in order to secure your company’s name on that site. But it’s ok if you don’t jump in and engage on every Social Media site and service that comes along.

I encourage business owners to be patient. The Web is moving quickly, more quickly than most of population, and your customers, can keep up with. Only 30-40% of all new users to Twitter actually use the service a month later. That means 60-70% of all Twitter users abandon the site/service almost immediately! Twitter is a great format for business conversations, creating leads, etc. but remember it is still a small player compared to search engines in terms of driving business growth.

So don’t panic, focus on what is working and only expand into the Social Media waters as you have the time and interest to make that investment. The reality is that the business on the Web is still being driven by Search Engines. Although Twitter is moving into the search arena, see its new home page, it is still a long ways off from competing with Google or even Yahoo and Bing in that arena.

The best way to grow your business is by using search engines to drive traffic to your website. It has the best ROI hands down. If you have a website that is easy to find (search engines), easy to use (usability/conversion) and easy to manage (content management system) then you will have the right foundation for growth. Once that is established you can start dabbling in the Social Media waters.

There’s been an overwhelming amount of love for Twitter this year, but Larry King might be single handedly responsible for starting my disenchantment with the most recent installment of the seemingly annual progression of the latest and greatest social media wunderkinds.  To be fair, my disenchantment began a few months ago, but a tweet a few days ago (2:58PM on July 26 to be exact) from Larry King’s official Twitter account (@kingsthings) sealed the deal:

Larry, I’ve got some news for you. For at least three reasons Twitter is the absolutely, positively WRONG medium to use for finding out why a Marathon is 26.2 miles.

First off, Larry, it demonstrates what we’ve kinda been suspecting all along – namely that you’re a no-talent, hack who’s risen to your station through merely the arbitrary caprice of fortune.  The standard answer to this question is pretty much conventional wisdom. I’ve taught middle school kids that could answer it.

Second, Larry, you can actually get your answer faster by using this crazy, new technology called a search engine. I’m sure this whole Internet thing is probably brand new to you and has to be pretty confusing (in fact, it’s probably pretty safe to assume that you’ve got some ghost writer Tweeting on your behalf to solicit the questions for your interview with Colin Powell that you’re unable to prepare on your own). But just in case you actually do get on the Internet someday, I created a demonstration of how this new-fangled thing called a “search engine” can help you find answers to life’s persistent questions.  Just CLICK HERE to see how it works!  Then, to get your answer click on the blue, underlined text at the top of the page that says “Marathon – Wikipedia the free encyclopedia”.

Third, Larry, the answer is actually more nuanced than you might think at first blush. Turns out that the distance from Marathon to Athens is shorter than 26.2 miles.  Turns out that primary historical sources disagree about whehter or not the first “Marathon runner” ran before or after the battle of Marathon.  Turns out that the 26.2 mile distance was the result of a series of last-minute changes made to the first modern marathon route established for the 1908 Olympics in London.  Maybe you knew that the standard answer wasn’t 100% accurate (I doubt it). But even if I stretch my imagination beyond the comprehensible and give you this benefit of the doubt, the fact still remains that crowd sourcing via your celebrity Twitter account is the least effective and most time consuming way to actually get your answer.  Just take a look at the overwhelming volume of responses your question generated by CLICKING HERE. You’ll notice something pretty quickly: a lot of people know some version of the standard answer, but nobody agrees on the more nuanced details.  If you’re really into crowd sourcing your answer, you should just cut to the chase and go to Wikipedia where the crowd sourcing has already been done for you.  Plus, Wikipedia has at least a modicum of editing that’s gone into their content.

Which brings me back to how Larry King finally brought about my disenchantment with Twitter.  In short, Twitter has become filled with crap and wading through all that crap takes more time and effort than regular people should have to put into it.  It takes a considerable investment of one’s time to follow Jeb’s advice about having a meaningful online converstaion and craft your Twitter network to a manageable level so that it’s actually useful and doesn’t become a ridiculous time sink.  What we need first and foremost in an answer is “correctness”. I have yet to find a better way to get “correctness” than by identifying an authority that can be trusted.  It’s way too easy to present the appearance of authoritativeness on the web without actually being an authority.  Just look at all the self-proclaimed authorities who wound up giving Larry a technically incorrect answer to his question.  Finding an authority is hard work (even off line).  Crowd sourcing via Twitter doesn’t get you any closer to an authoritative answer.  It just compounds the problem (especially when you use a celebrity account).  I know it’s tempting to think that crowd sourcing via Twitter is the way to go when it’s been so successful for Wikipedia, but Twitter just doesn’t work like Wikipedia.

I used to think that Twitter was pretty cool and pretty useful before the proliferation of celebrity accounts from the likes of Larry, Oprah and Martha.  So it looks like I am now beating Jeb to the punch in writing his next latest-social-media-fad-jumps-the-shark-blog-post.   Why is it that all these social media sites go through the same cycle of explosive growth that eventually brings about their demise? I suspect it’s because no one’s figured out a really good way to make the hard work of identifying authorities become easy. Finding an answer “that works” by playing a numbers game through social media sites can work OK for a while so long as the numbers stay fairly small.  However, once they reach their critical mass these social media fads just implode. Plus, playing the social media numbers games just skirts the fact that the answer is by no means guaranteed to be authoritative.  In attempting to make finding an authority easy, Twitter seems to have thrown their lot in with the celebrities. Or have the celebrities high-jacked Twitter?  Either way, that celebrities have made a good thing bad should be pretty self-evident.  I hate to say it but it seems that counting backlinks and other artificial “signs of trust” like the search engine algorithms do is the best thing we’ve got going so far.

So, Google don’t be worried by Jeb’s post that opined whether Twitter is a Google-slayer.  It isn’t and it won’t be.  In fact, it’ll probably be something our kids and grandkids reference when making fun of our generation.  I can already hear my daughter incredulously asking her friends, “Can you believe our parents spent their time at work reading ghost writers typing ‘In da house ATL!!!’ on some rapper’s Twitter account?”.

And if you’re wondering, yes, I probably woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.  So feel free to flame me in the comments below for being so hard on the beloved institutions like Larry King and Twitter. But be forewarned: I’ll probably be just as snarky in my responses as I am now.